Has the Mekong become the new South China Sea?
Has the Mekong become the new South China Sea?
WRITTEN BY CHARLES DUNST
11 June 2020
The Mekong River is mainland Southeast Asia’s lifeblood, delivering vitality, namely in the form of food and water, to some 66 million people. It originates from southwestern China’s glacial streams, and snakes for almost 3000 miles across five other countries: Myanmar (Burma), Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The mighty Mekong is thus known by many names, such as Sông Cửu Long (“River of Nine Dragons”) in Vietnamese or Tonle Than (“Great Waters”) in Khmer, all of which testify to its great power.
But the river is now in its last days “as a healthy ecosystem.” In the summer of 2019, the Mekong dropped to its lowest levels in a century; a section lost its traditional muddy brown hue, which was replaced by a deceptively optimistic sky blue. Some Cambodians, whose country is more reliant on the Mekong than any other, reported in the spring of 2020 that their fish catches were only 10 to 20 percent of previous years. The Mekong’s degradation is no inescapable accident, however: Excessive Chinese damming, coupled with the effects of climate change, has “robbed the river’s riches.”
China has in recent years claimed de facto ownership of the river and, as result, now controls a substantial chunk of mainland Southeast Asia’s economy. The Mekong, thanks to the level of Chinese control, is well on its way to becoming the next South China Sea: a strategic body of water to which China maintains expansive claims and over which it increasingly exercises control.
Climate change is rapidly melting the glaciers from which the Mekong originates, so the Chinese “are building safe deposit boxes” of water “because they know the bank account is going to be depleted eventually”
Southeast Asia holds a special place in China’s policy mind due to the region’s historical and economic ties to China and the around 30 million of ethnic Chinese scattered throughout. Since the early 2010s, Beijing has pursued closer ties with these nations through its “community of common destiny” rhetoric. Chinese leaders, Xi Jinping included, describe this idea in terms of inclusiveness and win-win cooperation, ultimately injecting “a deterministic sense of inevitability in the intertwined destiny” of China and ASEAN, thus further integrating Southeast Asia into a Sino-centric order to rival the United States’s “Washington Consensus.”
This is more attractive to Southeast Asia than the concept of tian xia—that everything “under the heavens” belonged to the superior Chinese civilization—by which the Chinese empire governed its neighborly relations for millennia. But just as tian xia demanded deference and tribute from China’s neighbors, so does membership in the “community of common destiny,” albeit in more palatable terms.
Beijing has found willing vassals in Phnom Penh and Vientiane, who necessarily lean on China for political and economic backing, but more internationally-favorable leaders in Bangkok and Hanoi have proved more reticent. The latter will perhaps be the most difficult to win over: Vietnamese wariness of China is widespread and ancient, dating back to the famed Triệu Thị Trinh’s 3rd century resistance against Chinese oppression.
In the days of tian xia, such insubordination could prompt Chinese military intervention. Now, China relies on coercion to bring hesitant would-be vassals into its modern tributary system. The Mekong serves a vital role in these efforts: In 2016, Vietnam experienced its worst drought in 90 years thanks partially to Chinese damming of the Mekong; Hanoi, in turn, had to ask Beijing to release water from its dams.
In the future, China could extract political goods for such altruism.
Southeast Asia’s institutional failures left it vulnerable to such predation. The Mekong River Commission (MRC), which includes Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, is supposed to regulate the river downstream and prevent Chinese aggression, but its operations are only advisory and largely ineffective. And China, while invited, is not officially a member of the Commission, meaning that it can sidestep the MRC’s prescription that member nations present their dam-building project proposals for discussion.
China, rather than join a body with such limitations, instead invited its members (and Myanmar) to establish the $22 billion Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) forum. The LMC allows China to play by its own rules, as it does in the South China Sea, ultimately creating the fait accompli of Chinese control over the Mekong.
“The MRC has no enforcing mechanism to force policymakers to agree on whether to build or not to build a dam on the mainstream,” former Cambodian energy minister Pou Sothirak said recently. “This LMC is a new type of Chinese diplomacy. You will have to withstand or face it because in no way will this slow down.”
China, with the LMC, promised mainland Southeast Asia cooperation; instead, Beijing through this avenue imposed its will on these smaller states, considering them, as historical vassals of a superior China, inherently lesser and worthy of being dominated.
China now regulates the entire river’s flow, and by limiting it Beijing’s engineers directly caused the river’s recent record low water levels, while Chinese water reserves swelled thanks to Mekong damming. Climate change is rapidly melting the glaciers from which the Mekong originates, so the Chinese “are building safe deposit boxes” of water “because they know the bank account is going to be depleted eventually.” The Mekong, mighty no more, is rapidly “flowing towards irreversible decline.”
And while enmity between Southeast Asian states and China has not yet flared-up in reference to the Mekong, as it has in the South China Sea, some opposition is building. This should not be surprising: Beijing’s takeover of a revered natural resource upon which multiple countries have relied for centuries was always bound to be received poorly. But now, as anti-Chinese sentiment rises in Southeast Asia due to the coronavirus pandemic, which also originated in China, opposition to Chinese damming promises to swell simultaneously.
Mainland Southeast Asia’s leaders would be wise to take this threat seriously and maneuver against Beijing’s bullying, perhaps even seeking support from the diplomatically distant United States. Indeed, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has already expressed some interest in backing a “transparent, rules-based approach to the Mekong.”
Failing to challenge this status quo will leave the region’s 66 million Mekong dependents distressingly reliant on China’s good graces—or in peril when their leaders fall out of them.
“There is a big gap between what they are offering me and what I need to have the same life I have now,” said one villager in Laos who refused to abandon his home for dam construction, despite repeated visits from government officials and private Chinese representatives.
“If we don’t take a stand, what will happen to us, and our future?”
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Charles Dunst is an associate at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics’ foreign policy think tank, and a journalist who has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was previously based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Image credit: NASA Gateway to Earth Photography.